The Importance of Company Blogs
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As startups continue to seize larger investments early on, it seems like fewer and fewer companies are incorporating blogging as a key ingredient in their marketing strategy. Instead, many startups are turning towards influencers to buy engagement.
Although this can be a great short term strategy for awareness, the staying power of a tweet, Facebook post, or Instagram story is minimal. A few hours later, the next post will be the hot topic and your message will be lost in a sea of content.
This article will discuss the advantages of building a robust content foundation through blogging. Some of the consequences of creating a strong blog were surprising to us, so this may help you make the difficult decision of whether or not to invest in a quality blog.
The benefits Of blogging
Blog articles are often far different than social media posts that are designed for short attention spans. Blog posts can include deep discussions on topics that are designed to completely engage the reader.
Outside the engagement, blogs can have long exposure cycles. While a tweet or Facebook post will be buried and forgotten in a matter of hours, blog posts can be found on the web for years. The long discovery cycles for blogs allow your content to have an impact for years.
If you imagine your typical customer. Consider how they might discover your brand for the first time. Will they stumble across your profile on social media or will they search for something online that will lead to your blog or product pages. In many industries, customers don’t find brands for the first time through social media. Similar to how you probably don’t make new friends through social media.
When a potential customer is searching for a topic that is related to your business, think of the impact it would have if the first result on Google was your blog post on that topic. New customers will instantly start from a position of trust and curiosity, while also being able to acquire a deeper understanding of your product through your blog.
Long-form content can be far more engaging than social media. Rather than a simple “like”, your content will be read and digested. The reader will take away deep knowledge of a topic they may not have previously understood, just because they had a more engaging experience consuming the content.
If you’re running a startup or business on a budget, blogging may be the answer to your marketing needs. Even established companies may want to rethink the way they leverage their blog. We’ve found many large companies only use their blog as a way to make announcements. This is a huge missed opportunity. Big companies have a following of customers who would love to read engaging content. If the company doesn’t fill that desire, people will be going elsewhere - potentially to competitors.
To highlight the benefits of blogging, I’ve collected a few examples of how our blog has affected our business in unexpected ways.
Customer advocacy
We have frequently seen situations where customers use our blog posts to drive home arguments, share ideas they find exciting, and answer questions.
Every customer we support has at least a microsphere of influence that represents the people that respect their opinion. When a customer shares our blog post with other people that value their opinion, we instantly get injected into their social circle.
The result is reliable organic growth.
Answers questions
If nothing else, having a well-written blog post will help answer a question that some of your customers are asking. When a customer better understands the market, how your product fits into the market, and how to use your product, you start on the path to building a dedicated user base.
The result is there are also more customers who are deeply knowledgeable about your products and services. When new customers ask questions, you now have a supportive community that is ready to take the reigns and answer questions.
Partnerships
Surprisingly, when you write blog posts about topics that are interesting to other people in your industry, they will read your blog. That doesn’t go only for customers, but also competitors, potential partners, and industry leaders.
On several occasions, we have been approached by some of the largest companies in our space because they were interested in the content we were publishing on our blog. The reasons were different each time, but they found our content useful and made it a point to connect so we could explore mutual opportunities.
Meeting with other companies opened doors to new collaborations that we never thought would be possible. The personal relationships we’ve built will continue to provide new opportunities as our products and services mature.
Fundraising
The way blogging has impacted our fundraising may be the most surprising. Not only were investors more familiar with our work because at one point or another did they stumble across our blog, several VCs specifically contacted us because they loved our blog.
This was probably the most unexpected result of having a quality blog.
Trust
Many of these advantages are facilitated by the building of trust that happens when someone reads your blog content. Maintaining a well-written blog builds a sense of trust in the decisions, execution, and knowledge of the company. When a new customer, partner, or investor gets a glimpse into the business through the blog, it instantly starts building trust.
Blogs are the ultimate way to express ideas in an open environment and engage people.
Marketing funnel
I won’t lie, using the blog as a funnel for the Shrimpy products was definitely one of our intentions. The unexpected aspect was just how significant this funnel would become.
At this moment, 80%+ of our new customers are acquired from the blog. That means 80% of the people who have signed up for our services first learned about Shrimpy through the blog. That number is far more significant than we would have ever expected. In fact, even when we paid thousands of dollars for influencer marketing, the blog still outperformed those campaigns by a significant margin.
SEO
In many ways, SEO ties all of these pieces together. After all, none of the previous benefits would be possible if the blog posts don’t show up in search engines.
What we found was the more we published, the better our SEO. The continuous pushing forward allowed us to systematically build up our SEO.
How to start a blog
Years ago, if you wanted to start blogging, it was a lot of work. You needed to code your own website, customize the different components, implement SEO strategies, source a hosting solution, find and link a domain name, continuously add features, and so much more. It was exhausting.
Today, it’s so easy anyone can do it. There is no excuse not to try.
Before we go any further - for the love of everything holy - don’t code your own blog. Some people think it’s “cool” to have a fancy blog that was specifically designed by themselves. I once overheard a developer say, “We developed our own blog because we’re real engineers.” Wasting $10,000 on developer hours for something that could be done by literally anyone for $29 is in no way “cool”.
The reality is it will take 10x longer than you expect to develop a blog from scratch, the results will be disappointing, and you will need continuous technical support for your blog forever. (Note: I mean forever in the most literal sense. A blog you personally code and launch today will still need technical support in 2030, 2040, and long after you’re dead. Don’t turn your blog into a lifelong burden.)
Use one of the many cheap blogging platforms. They have far more features than you could ever develop, they are reliable, and they will save you weeks or even months of work.
We use SquareSpace and they have been great. It can take you less than an hour to set up your first blog and start writing. It’s that fast.
There has been some debate on the topic of whether or not content creators should have a blog connected to their own website domain (for example - www.yourblog.com) or if it’s better to use a platform like Medium. Personally, I have used both and I like having the blog on our own domain. We’ve seen increased engagement, boosts to our SEO, and enjoy the better control of how the content is displayed. I would encourage you to try both options and pick a platform that feels most comfortable to you.
Getting into the mental space
When you’re starting a blog for your business, get into the habit of writing content constantly. It doesn’t always need to be content directly related to your business. In fact, it doesn’t even always need to be great content.
Consistently writing content will become the driving force for writing better content. Without publishing a significant amount of content, it’s difficult to know what works and what doesn’t. Something you thought wasn’t your best work may turn out to be incredible. On the other hand, an article that you believed to be your best may not produce the results you expected.
Trial and error is your friend. Write, write, write. Don’t stop writing.
In our startup, the blog is a full marketing tool. It’s an enormous funnel that we use to attract new customers, engage them with meaningful content, and then on-board them into our application.
Sometimes, it’s the niche topics that end up attracting the most attention from our target customers. Without writing on a variety of topics, we wouldn’t have been able to find these niche topics that excite people.
If we only wrote about topics that directly relate to our business, then far fewer people would be reading our articles. Instead of our blog being an announcement portal or a help center, like most companies, we want our blog to be a marketing tool.
If you want to bring in new people through your blog, write about interesting topics outside your business.
That doesn’t mean you should write a slew of blog posts about washing machines if you’re a company that sells tax software. It means if you’re a company that sells tax software, your customers may also find personal finance or other compliance topics interesting. If you’re a company that sells baseballs, your customers may also enjoy a discussion on how companies manufacture baseball bats.
By leveraging these related topics, you can create a foundation of interesting content that entices readers for hours of reading. Instead of reading a single article and leaving, readers will get caught in a web of content that interests them.
As you continue to publish these unique blog posts, you will find a voice that works for you.
How to find topics
When you’re trying to find new topics for your blog, there are times when new ideas will completely elude you. This is normal. Even the best bloggers in the world have this problem. What matters is how you move forward despite the lack of direction.
Whether you are inspired or not, make it a habit to still write. There are a number of different ways you can generate a starting point for the next blog post. My personal favorite is to dig up a few popular keywords that are related to our business and then just start writing.
There are a lot of great resources online to find topics that might work for your business, so use these to your advantage.
One that I personally enjoy using is Uber Suggest provided by Neil Patel. It allows you to search for keywords and topics that people are searching for in your industry. It’s completely free and easy to navigate, so I recommend at least trying it out. Of course, it isn’t perfect, but it provides enough information to get started.
With the results from searching through Uber Suggest, I create a list of 10 topics that could produce interesting content. From this list, I pick one. Even if I’m not certain what content I want to write about that particular topic, I commit to start on one idea and begin writing.
I like this system because it generates a list of topics that are related to your business, are interesting to the blogger, and have high SEO impact. You may find after writing a few paragraphs that this starting point leads to other new ideas that you didn’t expect.
How to start writing
Once you’ve created a list of keywords and topics to write about, it’s time to get writing.
There is no magic bullet for how to effectively write when you have writer’s block, but I will share what works the best for me. These steps may not work for you, but there’s no harm in giving them a shot.
Just write. Don’t try to make it sound nice, logical, or organized. Literally, just start writing the first thing that comes to mind when you think about the keywords you previously selected. You might end up writing gibberish or trash, but it will get some stuff on the page and the ideas can start flowing uninhibited.
After you’ve reached a state where uninhibited ideas are flowing, keep writing those ideas down as they come to you. Don’t stop now!
Keep writing! Less thinking, more writing.
I’ll be honest, these three tips are really just one tip. Start writing.
It may sound like a dumb tip, but it has helped me tremendously. Whenever I can’t think of anything to write, I just start jotting down the first thing that comes to my head. Literally, no filter. Just everything I think. This prevents the cycle of constantly thinking your thoughts aren’t good enough.
Once I’ve written 1,000 words and my ideas start to dry up, I take a break from writing.
This is when I typically go back and start my first edits. I’ll break up my text into sections, make my arguments more logical, provide examples, input additional detail, and expand on sections that feel underdeveloped.
My process is not very structured. Sometimes, the result of spewing thoughts onto a page uninhibited is a heaping pile of trash. Yet, that result doesn’t both me. It just means I need to make a lot of edits.
Sometimes, after writing a few paragraphs, I realize I don’t have anything interesting to say about a topic or the ideas I’m sharing are derivatives of other ideas I’ve read in the past.
When I get to either of these stages, I just stop writing and move on to the next article idea. I keep all of my unfinished work because sometime later in the future, inspiration may strike. When that time comes, I will have some thoughts already spewed onto the page. I try not to dwell on articles for too long or get attached. It’s good to cut losses early and quickly.
When to publish your blog post
Learning how to start writing is important, but so is learning when it’s time to ship your article. One of the scariest things when you first start blogging is shipping a blog post that is incomplete. The fear of readers finding mistakes can be paralyzing. The result is you never actually publish the blog post.
The way I know it’s time to publish a blog post is when I first start questioning if it’s ready to get published. If I’m not sure, it’s time.
The reason I publish when I’m “unsure” is because once I am unsure, I can no longer say with confidence that it’s not ready. At this point, I have typically written all of my thoughts, edited the article, and am now waiting for some divine confirmation that it’s ready to publish. Waiting until you are 100% sure it’s ready to publish means you waited too long to publish.
I think we all know there are clear moments when it’s definitely not time to publish a blog post. However, once we begin the process of questioning, it means you’ve probably done everything in your control to write a good article. Spending additional time waiting for an epiphany prevents you from moving onto other things you need to do. Publish the article and move on. If an epiphany strikes you at a later date, just write another article!
At the end of the day, it’s okay if you publish something with mistakes. You can always edit them out later. If someone comments to let you know there is an issue with the post, just update the post and republish. That’s it. The sky won’t cave in or your computer won’t spontaneously combust.
That doesn’t mean you should be sloppy. Write great content. Just don’t defer publishing once the anxiety of people reading your work starts to set in because you fear their criticism of your writing. It’s not worth it.
What makes a great blogger
Before we close, I want to provide an illustration of myself - the blogger. Some of you may have reached this point thinking it sounds like too much work for you. Others may think they are not ready or skilled enough to write interesting content.
I thought many of these same things when I first started our blog. However, my mind has been changed over the last 2 years, and I want to share why.
Our blog was constructed, maintained, and updated primarily by myself. 95% of the content on the blog was personally written by myself. There are a few specific articles that were authored by 3rd parties. For example, “How to Handle Tax Reporting for High Volume Crypto Traders” was provided by our partners at CryptoTrader.Tax or “Shrimpy: Logo Redesign” was written by our designer, Sumaya. However, for the most part, I’ve written almost all of the articles.
I’m not saying this because I think it’s impressive. It’s not. There are people who write far more and far better than me.
I’m sharing this insight to illustrate how easy it is to blog - even if you’re just one normal person. I was never an outstanding writer. I didn’t really start writing consistently until I launched the Shrimpy blog.
Yet, within a few months, I was already starting to see progress in my writing style. I could generate new ideas for posts quicker and construct posts in shorter amounts of time.
After a few months of practice and consistently writing, posts that would once take me a couple of days to write started only taking a day. Now, most blog posts only take a few hours to write.
My job is not to be a blogger, but to be the CEO of Shrimpy. That requirement demanded I get better at blogging quickly. I couldn’t spend all my time on blog posts.
I don’t believe there is anything unique or special about the way I developed my blogging style. The more I wrote the better I got. Anyone who spends time writing will see improvement.
Although being a great writer is helpful, I don’t see this as the primary requirement for having a nice blog. I would argue the most important feature of a nice blog is a blogger who actually cares about educating others, enjoys the process, and writes about topics with which they are comfortable.
Readers forgive spelling or grammar mistakes but get tired of reading a blog that is not designed to educate the reader.
I’ve noticed that my best performing blog posts are always the articles that have the best information for the reader. The articles that are really focused on informing the reader - with no ulterior motives, like spinning a sales pitch - are the posts that bring in the most customers.
Educate first, pitch later.
Final Thoughts
Maintaining a great blog is time-consuming. It’s not easy to write 3 great blog posts every week when you’re trying to do a million other things.
At the start, it’s going to be difficult. Some of your ideas won’t stick the way you expected and your engagement may be low. That’s ok, just keep going.
Every blogger makes mistakes, but successful bloggers learn from those mistakes and continuously work to improve the way they produce content.
It takes time to develop the skills to blog effectively. Take it in stride and keep going. Don’t stop. When things start getting hard and you don’t feel like you are getting anywhere, just keep going. You will make it through.
The promised land is out there, but you won’t get there without putting in the work.
A quick shout out to Stanley Idesis, who has helped inspire significant parts of our content marketing strategy. I highly recommend checking out his list of content marketing ideas.
76 Tactics: The Complete List of Content Marketing Strategies
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